The world's still getting a handle on what software defined networking (SDN) means for the data centre, but Japan would like to take it further. The nation's government is getting together with five of the country's big names in tech to work out what's needed to take SDN to the wide area.

Oracle has halved the cost of its Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software (EECS), an offering it says is “the unique set of software components, tools, and documentation required to make the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Hardware functional and usable as a platform for Oracle's Fusion Middleware and business applications.”

The Apache Foundation has voted to accept the “Storm” real time data processing tool into its incubator program, the first step towards making it an official part of the Foundation's open source offerings.

Various of the concerned intelligensia seem to be worried at present that the computers and the robots are going to come and take all our jobs. None of us will have anything to do, we'll starve and the capitalists who own the robots will end up with everything.

Windows Phone has confounded the sceptics by beating iOS for the third consecutive quarter to take second place in the Indian smartphone market, but analysts have warned handset branding will be key to its future growth there in the wake of Microsoft’s Nokia buyout.

Amazon might have its Glacier data archive, but Data Direct Networks, which is in the business of WOS (Web Object Scaler) wizardry, can now store a whole continental ice sheet of data with its trillion-object WOS7000 array.

Blast this cut-price box, more worthless than a scurvy-blighted galley rat

Nokia's latest Lumia, a budget 4G smartphone, alights on an odd perch in the marketplace, where it finds itself all alone. 4G voice contracts in the UK are currently a luxury good - with luxury price tags attached.

Apple's iOS 7 has come some way since its initial preview release and public unveiling back in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. Back then the focus was inevitably on the operating system’s new visual styling, and Apple does seem to have taken on board the early criticism of the new look.

A preview of the final build of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 has been released by Microsoft, bringing "30 per cent more speed" than any of its rival browsers when run on the OS, according to Redmond.

America began its love affair with tape following WWII, when Jack Mullin, serving in the US Army Signal Corps, dropped in on German radio broadcaster Bad Nauheim and returned home with two portable Magnetophons and 50 reels of tape.

The cloud will inevitably replace all other forms of IT. The cloud is a passing fad. The cloud is good, it is bad and it is hideously ugly. The cloud is a paradigm shift that will obliterate all previous technological developments. The cloud is an iterative evolutionary augmentation of extant technologies and nothing to write home about.

The Register's mighty Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team is, as you read this, in the field preparing a second test flight of our Vulture 2 spaceplane's rocket motor igniter assembly, following Monday's dramatic first attempt which ended on a Spanish mountainside following premature balloon burst.

London’s Earl’s Court plays host to 100% Design again this week, the UK’s largest showcase event for architects, designers and manufacturers. It's not all supercool decor, furniture and lighting though, as you'll find some tech gems among the design icons too.

The two lawmen who fired up the Secure Our Smartphones Initiative – an effort to get smartphone makers to install kill switches in their handsets – have kind words for Activation Lock, the feature of Apple's iOS 7 that allows users to remotely wipe their iDevices, and which requires their owners' Apple ID and password to be entered before the device can be reactivated.